


embers

by schuylering



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-20 13:30:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6008053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schuylering/pseuds/schuylering
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They have both lived too long.</p>
            </blockquote>





	embers

**Author's Note:**

> \- this takes place when both burr and eliza are in their seventies. mrs. eliza jumel was burr's second wife, whom he married when he was 77; this takes place some time before that, when they know each other but aren't married yet. as far as i can tell there's no evidence that eliza jumel and eliza hamilton knew each other, but it's theoretically possible, and for the sake of fanfiction i'm saying they did.

The day is wet and unsurprising, as Burr makes his way down the gray dirty street. He is uninvited at Mrs. Jumel's, but they've reached the point in their courtship where that is allowable, and he knocks on the door perfunctorily, before letting himself inside.

"Good afternoon," he calls out, shutting the door behind him and making his way to the parlor where he knows she'll be. "I was—"

He stops cold in the doorway: there is a figure seated on the settee but it's not his Eliza, and he finds it odd that he should know exactly who it is but he does, knows it instantly.

Eliza Hamilton looks up at his voice, and goes completely still. They stare at each other for a long, awful minute, as Burr tries to cough words up from his dry throat, or else leave, just make himself turn his back. He wants to, he thinks: his self-preservation instincts have always been too good.

"I'm sorry," he manages, finally. Then he realizes what he's said: his impeccable manners, always protecting him, now laying him bare. He swallows. "Mrs. Hamilton," he says cleanly, nodding, voice perfectly smooth without any deeper meaning. The name, even with the wrong title in front of it, is hard to get out.

"Mr. Burr," she says, nodding slightly in return. "You're here for Mrs. Jumel?"

"Yes," he manages.

"She was just called away," Eliza says; her voice is not quite toneless, but carefully smooth and empty, the way his had been just a moment ago. "Something in the kitchen."

"Ah."

He stands in paralytic silence, unable to move to excuse himself, unable to move at all. Eliza looks well, he thinks, wrinkled skin not yet sallow and her hair, though gray, still thick and neat. Her eyes are different, he thinks, but only in that they're brighter, more piercing than he'd remembered.

"I'm sorry about your daughter," she says, startling him after long moments of silence. "I know it's been many years, but I never said so at the time. I know…" She stops, seeming to think better of what she was going to say, but he understands. They seem to share some brief strange kinship before he looks away again, unable to hold her gaze.

"Thank you," he says stiffly. "But as you said, it was many years ago." The time means nothing to him, pain just as sharp as it had been the day he'd learned of her death, but Eliza Hamilton doesn't need to know that.

Something in her look tells him she already does. It's disquieting, Burr thinks, to be understood so easily. It's something Alexander used to do, and the thought is unaccountably awful, considering. 

"You don't have to do this, ma'am," he tells her quickly, under the weight of that understanding look.

"What is it I'm doing?" She asks it politely, not a hint of dryness or sarcasm.

He doesn't quite believe her, offering condolences to him, of all people. Of all the many and terrible things people do in this world, he thinks, this is the one he understands the least, this urge to let the past lie still.

"You don't have to pretend to—" he doesn't say _like me_ ; it's not quite right, so he lets the pause speak for itself "--here. We both know what I've done." He says it almost as a dare for her to scream at him, to yell and call him a traitor and a murderer and a scoundrel. It would be satisfying, he thinks.

Instead she sighs, a weary sigh. "Yes," she says simply, "we do," and there's something in her tone that belies her age more than her wrinkled skin or grayed hair.

They have both lived too long, he thinks: too long only because it's so much longer than he did, and life without Alexander, Burr's discovered, is exhausting. He's sure he would be half so tired now if he wasn't saddled with carrying Hamilton's ghost with him everywhere he goes, half out of some twisted form of penance and half because he has no choice: for thirty years now, longer than he even knew the man, people have looked at him and seen Alexander's ghost just over his shoulder. Or, perhaps more accurately, they have looked at Burr and seen only the absence of Hamilton: a worse fate, he thinks, by far.

This is how Eliza sees him, he knows: less a man than the absence of another. He wants to ask her if Alexander's ghost has followed her as well, if she turns and sees him around corners, if she hears his voice in empty rooms. If he does, Burr thinks bitterly, he has done more good for her than him: she has grown taller, somehow, more substantial even in her aged state than she'd ever looked by Hamilton's side. She raises money, he's heard, helps children, _does_ with the same unending energy as Alexander had, while Burr only wastes away under the weight of Hamilton's legacy.

Now Eliza watches him, eyes steely, un-blurred by age. She seems to be waiting for something: an apology he's not sure he can give, or an explanation. 

He's spent a long time convincing himself that he won't bend to the will of the people out for his blood or, worse, his regret. They want to see him penitent for his sin and he won't oblige them. It was a fair fight, he would tell them if they ever asked. He had no way of knowing Hamilton would aim for the sky. He has no regrets.

But Eliza is different, he knows: she out of everyone deserves something from him. "My apologies," he says, but it's not enough. "I hope you'll forgive me for—for the intrusion."

She looks at him, that piercing gaze again. He wonders if her God allows forgiveness: he wonders if that matters. He wonders if it would be any use to beg her, explain how he would take it back, if he could.

"Is that the only thing you wish forgiveness for?" she asks nimbly.

"Would you forgive me?" he answers, like he's asking something merely theoretical, something he has no stake in. He feels the slight empty smile on his lips and knows how callous it must seem, but he can't seem to help it. 

She looks away, out the window. For a moment she truly looks her age, frail and exhausted. He understands that, he thinks. He wonders if she waits for death as he does, only biding his time before he leaves for, he can only hope, oblivion..

"I'm very tired, Mr. Burr," she tells him, looking back at him, the steel back in her gaze. "I've lived a long time without Alexander, and I will live more. But when I do join my God in heaven, I don't wish to carry any hate or ill will with me." She says it as if it's simple, and despite himself Burr craves that, her staid certainty in her God and her life. "So yes, I do forgive you," she tells him.

As soon as the words are out he wants to stop her somehow, even by childishly covering her mouth, or some go back and erase them from where they hang between them now, heavy and irrevocable.

"However, I do believe you should go," she continues. "Just because I forgive you doesn't mean I ever want to see you again." The steel is replaced with a fire that burns dark and steady in her eyes. The embers, he thinks: the most useful part of a fire.

"I understand," he says; he does. He puts on his hat, a careful, practiced gesture. "Good evening, Mrs. Hamilton," he says quietly.

"Good evening, Mr. Burr," she replies, voice back to steel. 

He leaves her be.

**Author's Note:**

> over on tumblr at [schuylering](http://schuylering.tumblr.com/)


End file.
